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Photo-op president shooting blanks

President Obama’s exercise in gun legislation by photo-op and executive order yesterday may cheer liberals and outrage the NRA, but it will do almost nothing to curb gun violence.

Some of the new rules — 23 in all — may at first glance seem reasonable, such as expanding the amount of information available for background checks.

So does the boilerplate admonition to “launch a national safe and responsible gun-ownership campaign.” (But, psst, the National Rifle Association’s been doing that for years.)

And some actually make sense, such as helping schools and churches develop more effective emergency-response programs.

But all these are tepid, marginal stuff.

And others are outright posturing — such as issuing a presidential memorandum “directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence” — or simply risible — such as the order to nominate a new director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Um, what’s stopping you, Mr. President? (Of course, senators may well want to ask the ATF nominee about the Fast and Furious debacle.)

And none of these edicts, will have the slightest effect on psychos who illegally obtain weapons and then attack innocents in the free-fire areas known as “gun-free zones.”

Moreover, some of Obama’s commands raise important questions about civil liberties.

Take No. 4: “Direct the attorney general to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.”

They are, of course: Colorado shooter James Holmes passed background checks, as did the Virginia Tech killer and many others.

But if there were any clear way to identify “dangerous people” in advance (short of establishing a Department of Pre-Crime), we’d already be doing it.

And Obama’s notion of dragooning the country’s doctors into a network of snitches who ask their patients if they have guns at home is just repugnant.

The president has a few more substantive proposals, such as universal background checks on any gun sales — private sales are now exempt, but a tiny percentage of the total — and a restoration of the “assault rifle” ban.

But those changes require legislation, and far too many Democratic senators hail from gun-rights states, with several — Alaska’s Mark Begich, Arkansas’ Mark Pryor and Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu — facing re-election next year.

Still, now that Obama has put his ideas on the table, let’s have that “national conversation” about guns he says he wants.

Let’s ask why gun crime is worst in cities such as the one the president began his career in, Chicago, which has long had some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. Laws so strict that a federal court recently found them unconstitutional.

Let’s discuss high-capacity magazines and whether limiting them to 10 rounds really makes any difference when an experienced criminal can swap out magazines in less than a second. Let’s discuss how many mass shootings (and potential ones) have been terminated by the presence of armed civilians willing to risk their own lives to save the innocent and the unarmed.

The fact is, people on the left and the right could easily agree on a basic framework of national gun rules that respect the Second Amendment while ensuring that guns are not easily obtainable by felons and the insane.

For the rest, leave it up to the states and let the people decide.

Connecticut’s gun laws are among the strictest in the country, but they couldn’t prevent the Sandy Hook atrocity.

Meanwhile, just up the road, ultraliberal Vermont has basically no restrictions on gun ownership, no waiting periods and no permits necessary to carry a gun, openly or concealed. And who’s afraid of Vermont?